LRRD Newsletter

Welcome to Volume 11, Number 1 of Livestock Research for Rural
Development, the thirty-second issue of the journal.

Contents

Poster presentations

On Line Formats for LRRD

The HTML Format

The Acrobat (pdf), the MS-DOS and Windows Help formats

E-mail addresses of the Publishers and Editors of LRRD

LRRD on CD ROM

The University of Tropical Agriculture Foundation

The Ecological Farm On-line

Recent FAO Publications

Tropical Feeds

Animal Production and Health Series

Better Farming Series

Poster presentations

The editorial strategy of Livestock Research for Rural Development is to promote the
distribution of ideas and hypotheses as well as the documentation of relevant research
findings in sustainable use of natural renewable resources. The medium for the
former (ideas and hypotheses) traditionally has been through the presentation of short
research communications usually at a conference, seminar, workshop or a meeting of members
of a scientific association. At such meetings, when many short papers are submitted, these
may be accommodated in simultaneous sessions for oral presentation or increasingly in the
form of posters. The latter procedure is proving to be the more attractive as it
facilitates the dissemination of information by having it available on a continuous basis
throughout a meeting rather than at selected times as is the case with theatre
presentations.

In the same way that the "tele-conference", employing E-mail and WWW
communication, is emerging as a cost-effective alternative to the localised (in time
and place) scientific gathering, so the "electronic journal" can become a medium
for the "poster" presentations. The editors of LRRD are encouraging this
approach by means of a section in the journal devoted exclusively to "poster"
presentations. It is hoped that by creating a medium for presenting ideas based on
preliminary observations, readers interested in the data will be encouraged to enter into
a dialogue with the authors using the "lrrd-discuss" discussion list. Details
for the submission of the posters are given in "guides to
authors".

On Line Formats for Livestock Research for Rural Development

[HTML ('HyperText Markup Language')

HTML is the native language for publishing documents on the World Wide Web and is
understood by all Web browsing software. The journal, as the principal means of
publication of developing world sustainable agriculture, needs to be easily available to
the widest possible audience of interested people. Using HTML as the on online publishing
format has three principal advantages. The first is that everybody who finds the journal
will be able to read it with their Internet browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer or
Netscape are amongst the most common). Secondly, the Internet search engines such as Alta
Vista, Infoseek and others will index the pages. Thirdly, articles can be posted on the
WWW as a form of pre-publication as soon as they are formatted in HTML, thus increasing
tremendously the speed of communication of information.

A counter has been installed on the LRRD Homepage to record the numbers of visitors.
The trend over the 18 months since records were kept is shown in Figure 1. On average 9.6
persons have been visiting the Home Page daily during the past year, up from 6.6 persons
per day in the first six months.

All previous issues of the journal have now been converted to HTML format (thanks to
CIPAV staff in Colombia), thus there is available on the Internet through the CIPAV web
pages a library of nearly 10 years of research in the field of developing world
sustainable agriculture.

LRRD on CD ROM

The University of Tropical Agriculture Foundation (UTA)

The first MSc course, executed by UTA and funded by the Danish embassy in Hanoi, has
been completed. Copies of the research papers that form the theses of the first group of
students, and information about the Foundation, are available on the UTAF site at:

The Ecological Farm On-line

The Ecological Farm, also known as 'Finca Ecologica', located on the Campus of the
College of Agriculture and Forestry of the National University of Ho Chi Minh city, now
has a presence on the World Wide Web. The aim of the site is to give a digestible overview
of the technologies that are in use on the Ecological Farm. The site has been changed and
has recently (25 October 1998) been updated. The URL for the site is:

Recent FAO Publications

Tropical feeds

There is now an electronic edition of the book `Tropical Feeds', originally written by
Dr Bo Göhl, and published by FAO in 1971. The database (program prepared by Dr A W Speedy
and Nick Waltham) is available on diskette from: The Senior Officer (Feed Resources),
Animal Production and Health Division, FAO, Via della terme di Caracalla, 00100-Rome,
Italy. An updated version (September 1998) has been prepared and is now available.